


Letting Go the Snake

by chipperdyke



Category: Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Genre: F/F, FixitFic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 14:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11404224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chipperdyke/pseuds/chipperdyke
Summary: I wrote most of this when the movie came out and was delighted to discover that some people are posting in this category! So anyway here it is, belatedly.





	Letting Go the Snake

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this when the movie came out and was delighted to discover that some people are posting in this category! So anyway here it is, belatedly.

There was a knock on the hotel door, and Claire answered it. Maria's ears perked as she heard the low voice. It sounded like - but she had hoped too many times, and stayed seated on the couch, head bowed. Waiting to find out that it wasn't her.

"Hey. Maria gave me the room number, said to stop by?" Maria had not given anyone the room number, but that didn't matter. It was doubtless some mundane misunderstanding.

"Sure," Claire said, and a few moments later, her head appeared around the door jam. "You have a visitor. Busy?"

Maria shook her head, stumbling over the words as if she had been sleeping. "I, no, of course not, thank you, Claire. Did they give a name?"

Claire opened her eyes to respond, but Val had already stepped into view behind her, and Claire saw Maria's eyes jump to meet Val's. There were a few moments of silence.

"Claire, would you please excuse us?" Maria asked, surprised at how steady her voice was. She waited, taking a few deep breaths. Val shifted her feet, watching as Claire stepped over to a book stand, picking up her phone, and then finally leaving the suite.

Val slouched over to a nearby sofa, shaking a cigarette out of her pack and carelessly lighting it. She leaned back and examined Maria silently, and Maria felt uncertain and awkward under her gaze. Yet she waited, feeling two years of questions heavy on her shoulders. _What are you doing right now, Val?_ This was her incessant question, crashing over and over again in her consciousness, breaking the tiny triumphs that Maria managed to piece together like as many towers in the sand.

The question was answered. Val, for the first time in two years, was found. What was she doing? Studying Maria, like she had ever quite seen her before.

Val finished her cigarette, stubbing it out on the ashtray. "I thought I would come by. I had a hunch you'd be here."

"I asked Claire to book this one. I'm not sure why." Maria knew why. She hadn't stayed in this room since Val left, and she could still pretend that Val was there, just around the corner. On the other side of the door.

"It's just like the premiere of every other Hollywood film you've ever done. Camera crews are waiting outside to catch a glimpse of you." Val gave a half-smile, scoffing and peering ironically around the brim of her oversized glasses.

"You've made a name for yourself, I have heard," Maria said, partially to break that gaze, so insistent, so sudden. She leapt to her feet and started pacing. "I had never known you were a writer."

Val seemed to shrug, collapsing her body in the chair. "You wouldn't call it writing if you'd read it."

"How do you know I didn't?”

"Maria, you never read books," Val said, smiling again, this time seeming hopeless.

"Well," Maria said.

"I walked down that hill," Val said suddenly. "I could hear you yelling, but I didn't care. I could see the snake filling the valley, but it was not something that moved me. Nothing moved me, because I... I think I felt..." Val gestured with her hand. "Useless, empty, trapped. I had to leave."

"By leaving, you transformed Sigrid into Helena," Maria said quietly. "In the very first scene, I was already prepared for ... the play's ending."

Val stood, circling the couch. Val never wore scents, but Maria could smell her anyway, her head filling with Val's closeness. Their unfulfilled intimacy was a sweet, bitter cloud between them.

"You don't get it, Maria. I was always _Helena,_ reveling in my own hopeless downfall. All that time, you were struggling to come to terms with the role, to know her, when she was right before you. I justified her to you because I knew her so well. I could so clearly see you that my own self was ... just ... I was so devoted, so ..." Val was stumbling. She stepped away suddenly, turning back toward the couches. "I have to ask, are you involved with your assistant?"

"Not in the slightest," Maria said, throat tight. Val had paused, hand on the back of one of the cushions.

In a rush of daring, Maria stepped forward and put her hand over Val's. Val froze, but spoke quickly, as if to get it over with. "I could so clearly see you, and your disdain for my generation. I knew that my thoughts were unsophisticated, but I could not stop myself, because my thoughts were all that I had left of myself. You consumed me. Do you have any idea how powerful your personality is? The thought of you was enough to drive me away from every place I have been, since I left you."

"You should have told me, Val."

"I didn't have the words, then." She turned around, taking Maria's hand where it lay on hers, cupping it gently. "I don't know what I want now, but I've finally found my words. I wanted to tell you." She smiled gently, resigned. "Maybe now I can get some rest. Maybe I can stop running."

Maria put her other hand on Val's neck, feeling her fragility, her smallness. She rested her forehead on Val's, head dizzy with closeness, at Val's fast breaths near hers. The scent of her cheap Marlboros made Maria’s chest ache. "You have always belonged here, Val."

Val nodded, moving her face so that her lips were pressed against Maria's cheek. "I have always belonged to you."

The essential wrongness of the statement made Maria withdraw her face from Val's lips.

"If you are Helena, Val, what does that make me? Am I your Sigrid, always to own you, to isolate and control you?"

"I had never thought of you as such." Val bit her lip, pulling away from Maria and considering. "Sigrid reveled in her own power and privilege, while you never realized, I think, the hold you had on me."

"Yet it is true that I did want you for my own. I was delighted to have you to myself in that cabin. And I drove you away. For losing you like that, to the clouds, I never forgave myself."

"You thought I had died."

"I didn't get your text message until much later. I had already called the search crews. Even then, I never thought that you could really leave."

“I never really did,” Val said. “If you'd read my book you would know that it was about you, Maria.”

Maria absorbed this confession for a long moment, and then she scoffed. “It is about a girl, a teenager.”

“Your age doesn't define you,” Val said, eyes flashing. “And you know that. It's why it took so much for you to let go of Sigrid, because you knew she still resided inside you. You thought the role of Helena would destroy you, but you took it anyway, and you made it through the fire and brimstone, didn't you? And it's been two years.”

Maria saw the helpless tears in Val’s eyes, and she cupped her face. A touch she had never allowed herself before. Even when Val was sprawled out before her, body open, eyes guileless and warm, Maria had not allowed herself to take more than a hungry glance.

“It was space you needed,” Maria whispered. “And have you found yourself separate from me?”

Val just shrugged, and Maria pressed, “Are you ready to let the Maloja Snake go, Val?”

“You're the one who doesn't want me,” Val said, and it was a long moment before Maria understood.

“Thank you for being mine,” Maria said. “I won't try to keep you. I never have. I don't deserve you.” Despite her words, her hand trailed greedily down Val’s body to grasp her hip. Their bodies met, and Maria’s body sparked and tingled. Val’s hands came up to tangle in Maria's hair, and there were Val’s lips, smooth and so soft, her chin, her cheeks, her lips again. “I just want you.”

Val nodded and kissed her back.


End file.
